Rain Forest in the Southeast?

Hymenophyllum tunbrigense (Tunbridge Filmy-fern)

My association with Richard & Teresa Ware these last 45 years or so has enriched my life in many ways. One of those ways is by spurring my interest in botany and providing me a passing acquaintance with some of the most knowledgeable botanists in the Southeast. So today I am privy to enlightening posts like this one from Dr. Alan Weakley of the University of North Carolina and the author of Flora of the Southern & Mid-Atlantic States. 

Ecological facts of the Southern Blue Ridge Escarpment. The most consistently moist place in North America (month by month, year by year, millenium by millenium, and geologic era by geologic era) is the Southern Blue Ridge Escarpment region of sw. NC, nw. SC, and ne. GA, along the gorges of the Eastatoe, Toxaway, Horsepasture, Chattooga, and Whitewater). Waterfall central (more than anywhere else in North America), Shortia, filmy-ferns, and many other wonders, including a world-class hot-spot of organisms requiring high humidity: lungless salamanders, filmy-ferns, liverworts, mosses, lampshade spiders... (thank you, Lewis Anderson, R.I.P.). As end of year approaches, the Lake Toxaway Weather Station has recorded 127.55 inches for 2013, well above the usual standard for "temperate rain forests" of 80 inches, and the rainfall and humidity is higher still down in the gorges than at this station! - Alan Weakley, FaceBook, December 26, 2013